2025 Conference

Cost Update: the lunch conundrum

  • Costs keep rising. We thought San Diego was an aberration, but it’s more like “the new normal.”

    • AV costs ($3069) will add just under $50 to the cost of every registration fee.

    • Hotel adds 12.85% tax PLUS a 25% service charge = 37.85%! (Contract)

    • The buffet lunch initially planned for Friday will add about $80 to each full conference fee.

    • Resultant registration fees: $345 full, $195 half, $145 banquet-only

    • SOLUTIONS:
      a. Not host any lunch, leading to a roughly $265 per person full conf fee, or
      b. Have a full conference (with lunch) fee of $345 or a non-lunch full or half conference fee of $265.

    • Plus/Minus

      • It’s better to have everyone sit together for lunch, but it costs a LOT!

      • It MIGHT be better to forgo lunch altogether because if we do both, there will be an “in” and “out” group during lunch, and we don’t want to encourage that type of division. The alternative is that everyone is on their own for ALL meals except the banquet.

  • We’ll discuss the relative merits of these two options during the meeting. We need to make a good faith effort to set fees to meet our costs!

  • VOTE:

    • Full with lunch—full is $345

    • Full without lunch—$265 (includes everything else)

    • Offer both—both of the above

    • FYI: HALF is normally everything AFTER the sit-down lunch.

Location and Date

  • UPDATE (12/9): Poll results (25 participants)

    • Click for Poll Summary

    • Location tally

      • Nashville 9 45% (Jim can’t attend here)

      • Dallas 7 35%

      • Kansas City 4 20 % (Rob lives nearby and has offered to help with planning)

  • UPDATE (11/26/24). Only four board members provided input to our methodology, so we’re moving ahead with a poll to ask for input.

    • Only those who plan to attend (plus “maybes”) will be asked to vote.

    • We’ll ask for input on content, cost, and activities during the conference and MWSA programs and benefits (open to all).

    • We’ll take member input to fix and approve the location during our Dec 11 board meeting.

  • San Diego, so now mid or east

    • We traditionally alternate West of Mississippi, East of MS, central US

    • Last 8 conferences:

      • San Diego, CA

      • New London, CT

      • New Orleans, LA

      • Virtual (Covid)

      • “

      • Albuquerque, NM (joint w SWW)

      • Charleston, SC

      • San Antonio, TX

  • Top 3 from conf survey: Nashville, Kansas City, Dallas

    • In the conference survey spreadsheet below, click on “Location Tally” (at the bottom of the spreadsheet) to see the results from San Diego attendees.

  • Vote by membership on location and/or date

    • If we’re soliciting input on the date, I’d ask for a date range: i.e., end of Sept, or mid-Oct, or early November, etc.)

    • Date range constrained by awards schedule—earlier than mid-September tough-to-impossible. December is too busy. Also, need to allow time for travel planning for awards finalists.

  • We need to nail down the location and date soon to allow planning

    • My preference is to have our membership vote by the end of THIS MONTH (November), approve in our Dec 11 meeting, and announce after approval.

  • Organizer? Cathcart if no one else wants to run it.

2024 Conference Survey

 

Budget

2024 Recap

Dues Income

Conference Income



12/6 Finance Committee Meeting

We agreed to annual deficits of $2000 to as much as $4000-5000 to whittle down the current $48k cash on hand. We further agreed on a target cash cushion of between $10k and $20k. $20k target.

We also agreed to stop segregating funds into separate programs, awards, and operations accounts. While those budget categories will, in effect, be maintained via our budget spreadsheet, we’ll no longer have to transfer funds between accounts to make necessary payments. We’ll also stop keeping the running totals of each account separately. As a result, from now on, the treasurer will report overall cash on hand (not broken down by the three accounts).

Regarding the 2025 conference, we:

  • Agreed to a new budget line item of “support to conferences” (paid via general funds instead of conference registration fees)

  • Included under this new line item (total estimated $2699):

    • Hotel subsidies to board members working during the conference from general funds (estimated at $1500).

    • $250 for a videographer during the awards banquet

    • A possible subsidy to conference presenters. We agreed that if we could figure out a practical way of providing a 10% subsidy of registration fees (approx. cost $413), we’d present more accurate numbers and methodology to the board for their consideration and approval.

    • $500 to cover any excess conference costs not covered/anticipated by the total income from registration fees.

  • The reimbursement for the hotel and conference fee to the awards director (s) was not included in the new line item because this expense is listed as part of the awards budget (and covered by awards submission fees).

  • Committee members will scrub existing line items in current budget spreadsheet. Hugh will align QuickBooks with these categories.





Action Items (for the above FinComm meeting)

  • Budget Spreadsheet

    • Agree to spreadsheet format

    • one for the finance committee and board, another for public/membership

  • Ways to address deficit spending

  • Ways to address “robust” cash on hand… i.e., deficit spending!

  • Create 2025 budget plan and submit for board vote by the 11 Dec meeting.

Dispatches Magazine

During the May 10 board meeting, Gary Zelinski was volunteered to head up a committee dealing with issues with Dispatches magazine. Especially the poorly-thought-out and executed article by Sandi Linhardt (pasted below).

Issues

  • Before publication, someone from the board (or someone appointed by the board) should approve each issue.

I think this organization is amazing. We truly have caring people on the board and in membership, volunteering their time and doing their jobs well. They are kind, considerate, and I consider them good friends.

Every day, it seems, more and more people are learning about MWSA and the opportunities we offer, and they (figuratively) come knocking on our doors.

MWSA is always looking for book reviewers. Not only can reviewing/scoring a book increase your writing skills, it gives you an insight to whatand how books are written and received by the general population.

I receive multiple inquiries monthly regarding...well, everything, from Dispatches (which I do answer) to membership, reviews, conferences, complaints, you name it. I try to forward the ones not pertaining to

Dispatches to their rightful email addresses, but sometimes I miss the mark. I hope the person to whom I incorrectly forward an email passes it on to the correct recipient. I mean, we are an organization, aren’t we? Not just a bunch of people assigned various tasks?

It recently has come to my attention the MWSA website claims Dispatches pays for published articles.

That literally was/is news to me. I’d not been told that was a thing. I don’t even know when the proclamation was advertised on our website, but the revelation did illuminate some snarky emails I’ve received over the past year.

A member recently contacted me and asked me how much I paid, and would they get paid for previous articles. They sent me a screenshot of the web page and a link so I could read it/find it for myself. I’ve requested clarification on whom is paying, how much per article, and to whom do I send the bill but have not had any valid response from anyone I’ve contacted.

At any rate, as far as I know, Dispatches does not at this time pay for published articles. MWSA charges for advertising in Dispatches... maybe that’s from where the confusion came. Although I get paid for my services, I am a mere cog in this organization’s wheel. I don’t get paid nearly enough to pay members for their submissions.

I do hope you enjoy your quarterly magazine and you find the articles pleasant, informative, or entertaining, though. If I ever get an answer on who is paying for articles, I will let you know.

Until then, Enjoy and In Joy ~ Sandra.

Online Store Merchandise

From Joyce:

As you know, I volunteered to research how much T Shirts would cost and will design them if we all see value in having them for sale.

Here are the costs for several options, how much I think they could be sold for, and how much margin we could get depending on number we purchase and investment made. We could get some as early as two weeks from now if you want to sell at conference. Otherwise, we can have delivered them here and we can sell through website.

Everyone has different opinions on whether should be 100% preshrunk cotton or a poly/cotton blend. They also argue that each type has the same benefit over the other...lol...so will make that decision down the road with internet research. However, here they are:

***********
Hanes 5.2 oz 100% preshrunk Cotton T shirt - colored - with three color silk screen  - $6.52 each if we order 250 or $1630 total. There is a range of sizes...i suggest fewer in small sizes, more in larger...

We could sell them for $12 (plus shipping) which means that we would earn $3000 for a profit of $1370, or
for $15 (plus shipping) which is $3750 for a profit of $2120

**************

Or Hanes 5.2 oz 100% preshrunk Cotton T shirt - white - with three color silk screen 250 shirts is $5.61 or $1402.50

With same pricing, $12 would be $3000 with profit of $1597.50 and $15 would be $3750 with profit of $2347.50

**************
So as you see a colored background shirt is more than a white one. A heavier weight makes a difference too.

Here is Hanes 100% preshrunk 6.1 oz - white with 3 color silkscreen 250 shirts is $6.10 or $1525 total.

With same pricing, $12 would be $1475 profit and $15 would be $2225

**************

A canvas triblend  in white with three color silkscreen is $11.57 each or for 250 $2892.50

So $12 option isnt feasible here. 

For $15, our profit would only be $857.50
For $20, our profit would be $2107.50

***************

You can cut cost further by ordering more shirts at a time...example, for the  Hanes 5.2 oz 100% preshrunk cotton in white with three color design, the price per shirt for 500 is $4.92 (2460 investment) and for 750 its $4.59 ($3442.50 investment) and for 1000 its $4.39 ($4390 investment)...however, given amount of money in our operations account and that we have never tried to sell tshirts like this to earn money for operations beyond dues, I recommend buying 250 shirts. If successful, we can always order larger amounts in the future. I also recommend a standard design for now...one that stays the same year after year, but perhaps for future events, I can design new ones that go with the event and that cost and return can come out of and go into the programming account. Example would be tshirts that would say Military Writers in San Antonio or something that makes it a keepsake for the particular event...in those cases, maybe we would buy only 100 shirts. You could also include that cost in the fee and then we would have a known amount to order...in that case, we arent looking for a profit neccesarily.

Another way to reduce our cost would be to limit design colors to one or two....which can be done...but to give you an idea, our logo is five colors.

If you prefer polo shirts, its a different animal and would require embroidery rather than silkscreen, I think...and we would have to sell a lot at a higher price to make them money makers.

Shipping from this particular company is free to one location...if we dont mind waiting two weeks. As I said in earlier email, Red Engine Press would handle packing up individual shirts and sending them out...customers would pay extra for packaging and shipping costs. Tax is another issue though...we would have to check with Don Farenacci on that given our tax status...and I have included Don in this email.

So, before I do more research, is this something we want to pursue? This is just one company, there are many out there and we might find some differences up or down in pricing or quality...but I wont go further until you give me go ahead.

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